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Goal orientations and classroom goal structures proved to be highly predictive of classroom-related behaviors and academic achievement. The purpose of the present study was to predict students’ classroom behaviors from goal orientations and classroom goal structures and compare those predictions across students with and without learning problems. Participants were 209 typical students and 18 students with learning difficulties/disabilities (LD). Individual goal orientations and perceptions of classrooms’ goal structures were assessed using self-reports. Student behaviors were assessed over five consecutive days during school hours. Using Multilevel Random Coefficient Modeling (MRCM) procedures, results indicated that mastery approach goals and a mastery goal structure were positive predictors of positive affect, student engagement and students’ perceptions of reinforcement from teachers. Mastery avoidance goals were a negative predictor of positive affective states and a positive predictor of both negative affective states and perceptions of punishment. Last, performance approach goals and a performance goal structure exerted deleterious effects on students’ positive classroom behaviors, particularly for students with LD. When matching mastery goals with a mastery goal structure, effects were significantly more pronounced, and in the desired direction, compared to the matching of performance goals with a performance goal structure. Implications of the findings for practice are discussed.

The importance of involving subject matter experts (SMEs) in ERP implementations is well established. SMEs' knowledge of business and system processes are critical to conducting gap analyses and configuring enterprise systems. But what happens to SMEs on completion of the implementation phase? Prior qualitative research found that some organizations return SMEs to their old department, which can contribute to knowledge transfer; while other organizations retain the services of SMEs, to assist in ongoing efforts with support and enhancement of the systems. The purpose of this study is to understand post‐implementation organizational choices – when SMEs are retained and returned. The aim is to understand these choices relative to the goals of their project. Theoretically, organizations that return SMEs move toward a distributed or hybrid model, while organizations that retain SMEs employ a centralized functional‐support structure. In accordance with contingency theory, these structural choices should align with an organization's goals and measures of success.

This research conceptually builds on prior qualitative research, but is still exploratory in nature. The authors report on findings from an online survey conducted with 65 organizations. The sample included small, medium and large firms. Respondents were key decision‐makers in their organization's ERP initiatives (directors and managers) recruited from two user‐group associations (higher education and health care), primarily from the USA and Canada. Descriptive statistics and t‐tests (when appropriate) were utilized to analyze and report the findings.

The hybrid structure (neither completely centralized nor decentralized) was utilized most often (66 percent of the organizations in the sample). The organization's original goals and measures of success did not seem to dictate the final organizational structure, as would be predicted by contingency theory. The authors interpret this as an indication that the choice of structural form is not easily explained based on goals and objectives. They conjecture that devising a structural approach to supporting such a complex inter‐functional system such as ERP requires solving many complex simultaneous organizational problems.

This research involves a small sample of 65 organizations and is exploratory in nature; hence, it may not be projectable to a larger population. Future research should supplement this study with more industry user groups, expand the sample size, and utilize more advanced statistical methods.

Previous research has focused on successfully implementing ERP, neglecting post‐implementation design. This study contributes to a growing body of work with regard to post‐implementation design, taking into consideration SMEs and reporting structure, goals, and measures of success utilizing contingency theory as the backdrop.

The purpose of this paper is to: (1) better understand the structure (hierarchy) of customer goals providing conceptual clarity; and (2) propose a hierarchy of customer goals conceptual framework that explicates how healthcare customer goals are linked to drivers and outcomes, thus building theory and informing practice.

The research draws on 21 in-depth interviews of patients with a chronic disease. Drawing principally on construal-level theory and using manual thematic analysis and Leximancer, this article provides new insights into customer goals.

In a first, the authors identify a two-dimensional structure for each of the three main goal types, which previously had been viewed as unidimensional. The authors develop a conceptual framework linking drivers of goal setting (promotion/prevention focus world view and perceived role) with goal type (life goals, focal goals and action plan goals and their respective subgoals) and outcomes (four forms of subjective well-being). Visual concept maps illustrate the relative importance of certain health-related goals over others.

The usefulness of the authors’ conceptual framework is demonstrated through the application of their framework to goal setting among healthcare customers, showing links between the structure of goals (life goals, focal goals and action plan goals) to drivers (promotion/prevention focus world view and perceived role) and outcomes (subjective well-being) and the framework's potential application to other service settings.

This study contributes to healthcare marketing and service management literature by providing new insights into goal setting and proposing a novel hierarchy of customer goals conceptual framework linking drivers, goal types and outcomes.

This study aims to propose that, in business-to-business (B2B) industries, number of strategic alliances firms established before a “black swan” event enhances their chances to survive the black swan, and the enhancements take place through moderation effects. Changes in firms’ core structures – their stated goals, authority structure, core technologies and marketing strategies – to adapt to business jolts have adverse effects on firm performance. Firms’ existing B2B strategic alliances moderate the effects negatively by outsourcing different goals, authority structures, core technologies and marketing strategies to partners who fit the changed environment.

This study collected quantitative data and analyzed the data with the regression method.

Using data from Chinese firms in five technology industries during the 2007–2009 economic crisis, this study finds that firms’ internal adaptation is negatively correlated with their performance during economic crises, and B2B strategic alliances negatively moderate this relationship.

First, this study focuses on B2B strategic alliances, and it is not clear whether the findings apply to B2C industries, where strategic alliances may not be common. Perhaps firms can use other means of survival in addition to strategic alliances in B2C industries. Second, this study does not differentiate between fast-moving and slow-moving industries, and it is not clear whether strategic alliances play the same role in both industries. Third, this study does not differentiate firm ages and sizes. It remains unclear how large, established and small, young firms differ when facing crises. Finally, this study is based on the Chinese setting, and it is not clear whether the findings apply to other markets as well. These issues should be explored in future studies.

Changing firms’ core structures harms their performance during black swan crises because such crises are unpredictable, and planned changes may not adapt firms to crises. Managers should not attempt to change their core structures during crises. B2B strategic alliances provide an effective means for firms to survive crises.

This paper makes two contributions to the existing literature: First, this paper demonstrates that changes of one of the four core structures of a firm to cope with black swan events have negative impacts on firm performance. Second, this paper identifies the importance of holding a variety of strategic alliances previously to the black swan events to reduce the negative impacts of changing core structures.

Recent innovations in management control systems, such as the Balanced Scorecard System, reflect today’s complex business environment by accounting for performance in multiple areas. When individuals must allocate their time between multiple areas that compete for their time, the manner in which incentives are structured is hypothesized to influence their decisions differently depending on goal difficulty. A decision-making experiment was conducted to test this proposition. When incentives were structured so that each area of the Balanced Scorecard is rewarded separately, challenging goals received more planned attention than easy or unattainable goals following previous findings. When incentives were structured so that goals in all areas must be achieved together, the influence of goal difficulty on the time planning decision diverges from previous findings such that areas having unattainable goals receive the same planned attention as areas having challenging goals. The results suggest that companies must consider how performance is rewarded within a Balanced Scorecard framework.

The aims of this study were (1) to examine the relationships among achievement goals, self-concept, learning strategies and self-regulation for post-secondary Indigenous Australian and Native American students and (2) to investigate whether the relationships among these key variables were similar or different for the two groups.

Students from the two Indigenous groups answered questionnaires assessing the relevant variables. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the data. Structure-oriented analysis was used to compare the two groups in terms of the strengths of the pathways, while level-oriented analysis was used to compare mean level differences.

Self-concept was found to positively predict deep learning and self-regulated learning, and these effects were mediated by achievement goals. Students who pursued mastery and social goals had more positive educational outcomes. Both structure and level-oriented differences were found.

Drawing on two distinct research traditions – self-concept and achievement goals – this study explored the synergies between these two perspectives and showed how the key constructs drawn from each framework were associated with successful learning.

To improve learning outcomes, interventions may need to target students’ self-concept, mastery-oriented and socially oriented motivations.

Supporting Indigenous students in their post-secondary education is an imperative. Psychologists have important insights to offer that can help achieve this noble aim.

Research on Indigenous students has mostly adopted a deficiency model. In contrast, this study takes an explicitly positive perspective on Indigenous student success by focusing on the active psychological ingredients that facilitate successful learning.

Much of the extant evidence in the marketing literature posits that firms use strategic alliances to share resources, costs and risks as paths to performance improvements. Drawing from the organizational ecology theory, this study aims to propose a different rationale, namely, that strategic alliances protect a firm’s core structure – its stated goals, authority structure, core technologies and marketing strategies – by mitigating the need for hazardous changes in hostile environments.

This study collected quantitative data using market survey and analyzed the data with the regression method.

Using Chinese firms in three technology industries as the research setting, this research finds a positive and significant relationship between environmental hostility and core structure dynamism. Although strategic alliances themselves have no direct bearing on core structure dynamism, they are found to moderate this relationship negatively, that is, strategic alliances attenuate the relationship between environmental hostility and structural changes.

This paper argues that strategic alliances have significant moderating effects on firm performance, that is, firms use strategic alliances to outsource competence to partners and, thus, avoid internal turmoil. However, the moderating effect alone cannot explain the complexity of strategic alliances. There could exist other effects that remain unknown. In addition, individual-level factors could have significant impacts on strategic alliance management. Future studies should look into these issues to advance the authors’ knowledge on strategic alliances.

The findings of this study show that managers should outsource competence to partners when they experience turmoil in markets. Adapting to market turmoil internally could lead to market failure.

This study provides a new rationale for strategic alliances, that is, firms use strategic alliances to reduce market uncertainty. This rationale has not been reported in the existing literature.

Using the moral responsibility theory of corporate sustainability (MRCS) framework , the study examined Chinese textile and apparel (T&A) manufacturers' moral duty positions, goals and structures toward sustainability, with a goal of creating a spectrum of corporate sustainability (CS) performance.

An online survey method was employed to investigate participants' views on their companies' perceptions, goals and structures toward each of the listed sustainability-related activities.

The results showed that all participants expressed their companies have moral responsibilities toward some aspects of sustainability. Particularly, they viewed that their companies emphasize labor relations (LR) and righteous operation (RO) activities over environmental protection (EP) or public welfare involvement (PW) activities when fulfilling their sustainability responsibilities. After analyzing each response by following MRCS, 41 companies were categorized as occasionally sustainability corporations. The remaining 259 responses were categorized as consistently sustainability corporations in selective areas.

The study for the first time revealed the sustainability-related activities that most respondents in Chinese T&A manufacturing industry perceived as perfect or imperfect duties. Findings add knowledge to the area of corporate moral responsibility toward sustainability and show a spectrum of Chinese textile and apparel manufacturers' sustainability performance, empirically supporting MRCS.

Introduced into the literature a decade ago, grit originally defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals has stimulated considerable research on positive effects primarily in the academic and military contexts, as well as attracted widespread media attention. Despite recent criticism regarding grit’s construct and criterion-related validity, research on grit has begun to spill over into the work context as well. In this chapter, the authors provide an overview of the initial theoretical foundations of grit as a motivational driver, and present newer conceptualizations on the mechanisms of grit’s positive effects rooted in goal-setting theory. Furthermore, the authors also draw attention to existing shortcomings of the current definition and measurement of grit, and their implications for its scientific and practical application. After establishing a theoretical understanding, the authors discuss the potential utility of grit for human resource management, related to staffing and recruitment, development and training, and performance management systems as well as performance evaluations. The authors conclude this chapter with a discussion of necessary and potential future research, and consider the practical implications of grit in its current state.

The data structuring mechanisms provided by the current problem solving environment have been found to satisfy modeling the problem solutions for common decision making processes of a static nature, whereas problems of a complex nature (e.g. resource management and optimization) need an abstract data structuring mechanism capable of emulating real‐life objects (e.g. human managers). This paper explains the concept of developing a new data structure based on a semantic network called SYSTEM MAP and shows how this novel data structure can be used to model expert resource management systems of a particularly hierarchical type.